I want you to think back to the first Bible you can remember receiving? Who gave it to you? What did it look like? Was it a children’s Bible or a regular Bible? How old were you when you got it? Did you have a special place in your room or in the house where it went? Did your family have other copies of the Bible? How did your copy compare with theirs? Do you still own it? If not, what happened to it? I want you to think about that and then share with someone sitting near you for a few moments and tell each other about that Bible. The first Bible I can remember having was big and it had a blue cover, and it wasn’t a little kids Bible, but it wasn’t a full translation either, or at least I don’t think it was, and for the most part it just sat on my bookcase. I would occasionally take it out and open it up and read something, but it wasn’t something I read all the time. I knew the book and the stories were special, but I couldn’t tell you why they were special, I just knew they was special. It was different. I mean it’s pretty rare these days to hear any book read out loud in a group, but we do that with the Bible. But no one ever sat me down to tell me why it was special or to teach me how to read the Bible, or even if to say that we had to read the Bible differently than we read other books. I think I assumed we had to read it differently, but I didn’t know how. I suspect that is true with you as well, that few of you ever had someone walk you through a Bible or talk with you about how to engage with scripture.
It is regularly said that the Bible is the bestselling book of all time, but I think it also has to rate right up there with Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time as book that people own but don’t read. In polls people say they read and understand the Bible, but then their answers to follow-up questions show the exact opposite, such as that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife, 10% of the population, or the 40% who believe that both the Old and the New Testaments were both written a few years after Jesus’ death. We know it’s important, we say it’s important, but yet few people actually engage with the Bible on a regular basis, and perhaps some of that is because we’re not really sure what to make of the Bible or even where to begin. And so as we send our students and teachers back to the classrooms this week, I thought it might be an appropriate time, to do a quick sermon on how to read the Bible. And let me start with my first caveat that there is no way I can even begin to say everything that might be said about how to approach scripture, and the different ways to read scripture, but I hope to give just enough that some who might be sitting on the sidelines saying “I’d like to play, but I don’t know how” will get off the bench and begin engaging with scripture. So that’s the first point. The second point is I want to provide a little bit of background that I think is important and necessary to know as we look at, think about and engage with the Bible. The last caveat is that this message didn’t turn out the way I had imagined it as I was preparing for today, which could mean either that I listened to the movement of the Spirit and went a different way, or I didn’t listen and went a different way. We’ll find out in about 25 minutes which of those it was.
But, the first point to know about the Bible is that it is not one book. In the Western Protestant tradition, we accept 66 books in the Bible. There are 39 in the Old Testament, or better referred to in my opinion as the Hebrew Scriptures, and there are 27 in the New Testament. Now I say in the western Protestant tradition, because these numbers differ for other Christian traditions. The Roman Catholic church has books that are part of what are known as the apocrypha, increasing the number accepted in the Hebrew scriptures to 46, the Eastern Orthodox Church accepts 51 books in the Hebrew Scriptures, and some other orthodox churches accept even more. In general, the Christian churches all accept the same 27 books of the New Testament. So for Christians when we talk about the Bible, it depends on which group we are talking to for what that term means. And then, of course, when we are talking with Jews, it’s only the books of the Hebrew Scriptures, and while they say there are only 24 books in the scripture, they are exactly the same ones we accept, it’s just that they count the 12 minor prophets all as one work, rather than 12 separate works, and whereas we have 1 and 2 kings, and 1 and 2 Samuel, as examples, in the Jewish Bible they are contained all as one work.
Until the advent of the printing press, not only wouldn’t you have been able to hold the Bible in your hand like this, but you wouldn’t even have had all of the books in one book. Having this like this now, helps to make it seem like it’s one, but it’s not. The word Bible, comes from the Greek Biblia, which means books, plural. Different genres, poems, history, law, revelation, prophecy, gospels, letters…. This is a collection of books that don’t all tell the same story and don’t even agree with each other on many occasions. An example often used is about the book of Ruth, which tells us about Ruth, a Moabite woman, who, long story short, marries an Israelite man, and in doing so becomes the great-grandmother of King David. Now this mixed marriage, and its celebration, stands in contrast to the story put forth in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah in which Israelite men are told to abandon their foreign wives and families and instead marry a good Jewish girl. The book of Ruth is therefore in conversation with, and against, these two books, as well as other portions, like in Deuteronomy where anyone of Moabite descent, even to the 10th generation, shall not be admitted into the assembly, or tent, of the Lord. So Israel’s greatest king is of a mixed-marriage, of Moabite descent, and of course the person who builds the Temple, Solomon, is also and only fourth generation, so a violation of Deuteronomic law. So pay attention to these conversations and be cautious when saying “the Bible says” because it might also say exactly the opposite.
Now one of the questions I am asked often is the relation between the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, and whether the new replaces the old, or what we are to think of that, and, as a corollary, if all scripture is equal. This is a debate that has been taking place for the entirety of the history of the church. Indeed, the reason why the books of the New Testament began to be compiled by the church was because of a man named Marcion, who said that the God of the Old Testament was not the God of Jesus, and sought to remove the entirety of the Old Testament as not being about our God. The church declared him a heretic and said that the Hebrew scriptures, which remember are the only scriptures that Jesus knew, were still important, and the reason they are still included in the Christian canon today, and that the God of the Old Testament was also the God Jesus was talking about. That also began arguments about what books should be included as Christian scriptures and it wasn’t until the year 367 that a list containing all 27 books of the New Testament that we have was published. And the official statement of the United Methodist church says that the old testament is not contrary to the New.
And yet, as Christians, we do usually see them differently because the New Testament tells us about Jesus and so does that mean that there is a hierarchy of scripture. And so here is where I do my little dance and say yes, with some significant caveats. It’s clear from Jesus and the apostles that some areas of scripture were more used, than others. So, for example, Isaiah and Psalms are quoted quite a bit, whereas others, like Ezra and Lamentations, are not quoted at all. Clearly Jesus saying that we are to turn the other cheek trumps the passage from Exodus which says an eye for an eye, because Jesus specifically says that it is being replaced. But what about other passages, or how do we rank what’s more important, or even what might be ignored, such as the fact that we don’t follow kosher laws nor do we require circumcision? Well that’s where the hard work really begins, and where the trouble can also start, because the truth is that we all pick and choose scripture that we want to follow and what we want to ignore. Liberal, conservative, middle of the road, we all pick and choose, even the authors of the New Testament did it. In 1 Timothy we read that men should have authority over women because Adam was made first. Well that’s picking and choosing to make the point he wants to make, and it totally ignores the first creation story in which men and women were made at the same time. We all pick and choose, so what do we do about it, and how do we do it with integrity?
First is to recognize that we are doing it, and second, and most importantly, is to have a reason for why we pick and choose what we do. It’s not just rejecting things because we don’t like them, or because we think they don’t apply to us, because more than likely in doing that we are rejecting things exactly because they apply to us. Scripture should not only give us wisdom and insight, it is after all not just a means of grace, of feeling God’s love, but also, as John Wesley says, “contains all things necessary for our salvation.” That means it should push us and challenge us as well. It’s been said that preaching should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, well scripture should be doing exactly the same thing. We should be both comforted and afflicted by what we read, and when we are challenged the answer isn’t to throw it out, but to figure out what it’s challenging, and what are we going to do about it, and when we decide that something might not apply any more is to be able to give reasons, and more than “I disagree”, but sound theological reasons with scriptural background to support your argument.
State Farm came out with some commercials a while ago that I think have something to do with this topic, take a look at one of them…. Context matters. The man and the woman are saying exactly the same words, but the outcome of those words is radically different. The context of scripture matters as well. There are no chapter or verses in the original manuscripts. Chapters were added in the 13th century, and verses came into being mid-16th century, and while it’s really easy now to cite chapter and verse that also makes it easy to take passages out of context, not only it’s context in the book in which it’s contained, but also the context in which the passage was originally written, which often can have a profound impact on how we see and understand a text. But, we also have our own context. While you may hear people talk about not wanting to interpret scripture, but instead to let the scripture simply say what it says, that’s impossible to do. All of us bring our own context to what we read. It’s impossible not to. We bring who we are, what we’ve done, what we’ve experienced into our reading of scripture. It’s the lens we use, and the more we understand about the lens, about our context, the better we will be in recognizing what we bring so that we can try and see scripture differently than we might otherwise do. Secondarily, unless you are reading scripture in either the original Hebrew for the Old Testament or in Greek for the New Testament, then scripture has already been interpreted for you to start, because in translation, they have to decide how they are going translate words, that sometimes have multiple meanings, of deciding what’s best, and also trying to translate an idea that simply isn’t translatable out of its original language.
But as Methodists there is one more thing that makes how we approach scripture important and different from other traditions, and that is what is known as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. The pieces are scripture, tradition, experience and reason. Now I think that seeing it as a quadrilateral is wrong, instead the image I use is a three-legged stool, with scripture as the seat. Scripture is the seat because it is what we rest upon and where we place our weight, but it’s supported by these three legs. And so what Wesley talked about was that when we approach scripture we should read it from multiple perspectives to help us understand it. We should know what the tradition of the church has said about this passage, which then requires additional study beyond scripture. We should ask what our experience says about this passage, and how does this passage then give meaning or purpose or understanding to our lives. And finally we should ask, what does our reason say about this passage. That is, don’t check your brain at the door when reading scripture, after all Jesus says we are to love God with all of our heart and mind. Does our reason accord with the passage and with the tradition, or is it different, and why. It was using this process, for example, that led Wesley to become the first theologian of any significance to come out in opposition to slavery, not on economic grounds, which was how it was often argued, but on moral grounds, because he said that while slavery was clearly supported by scripture and by tradition, that his experience of slavery, especially in the American south, and his reason showed him that this was not a part of God’s plan. That perhaps it was at some point in the past, but it wasn’t anymore, and so he changed, and eventually so did the rest of the world. That moves us way past simply saying “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it,” first because that’s a terrible saying, and one we shouldn’t use, and second because it truly allows us to engage with scripture as a conversation: Us listening to scripture and then responding to scripture.
My final piece of advice is perhaps where we might have started, and that is to approach scripture with prayer, asking for guidance of the Holy Spirit in reading and understanding, in questioning and accepting, in receiving and perhaps rejecting, and then also approaching scripture with humility because as soon as we think we have scripture figured out we need to go back and read it again because we’ve probably missed something. Part of the power of scripture is that it continues to speak to us and continues to change as we change. It is inspired and it inspires. These are the books that the church has said are important, but my final point is that we don’t worship the Bible, we worship God, and we can make the Bible and idol when we think that it says that the Word was made ink and came to dwell on a page. But that is not the word we follow, we follow the Word that became flesh and came to dwell in the world. Jesus is the foundation of our faith, and the one we worship, and one of the ways we come to know Jesus and God is through engaging with scripture. St. Augustine said that the goal of scripture was to induce love for God and neighbor and thus to order our lives accordingly. As we are called to know and love God, that means that we need to be reading scripture, and if we are not being challenged by scripture, then we are not reading it closely enough, if we are not being inspired by scripture, then we are not reading it closely enough. but know that when we read scripture the best we can, that’s the best we can do. So, go our and pick up your bible and pray and read, and question and be challenged, for scripture “is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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